Lafayette PD receives $1.2 million in federal funds

The Attorney General announced funding awards to 179 law enforcement agencies across the nation, which allows those agencies to hire 802 additional full-time law enforcement officers.

The Department of Justice on Monday announced the 179 police agencies nationwide selected to split almost $98 million in Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Program funds distributed by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' office.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department will be able to hire additional officers with money from the Department of Justice's 2017 COPS Hiring Program.

Beth Drake, U.S. Attorney for the District of SC, applauded the DOJ's continued dedication to fighting violent crime at the local level.

"Cities and states that cooperate with federal law enforcement make all of us safer by helping remove unsafe criminals from our communities", Sessions said in a release Monday.

The City of Myrtle Beach was awarded $1,250,000 in grant funding for the hiring of 10 new officers. The Blount County Sheriff's Department received $746,117 to fund six officers and the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department received $250,000 to fund two officers.

Sessions earlier this year announced the awards process would focus "priority consideration" on issuing the awards to departments that were willing to play ball with federal authorities on immigration laws, and announced that most of the grants greenlighted by Washington met these criteria. Eighty percent of the awarded agencies received additional points based on their certifications of willingness to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, according to the release. Here is a complete list of all recipients of the grant. Sessions to testify at hearing amid Russian Federation scrutiny Federal Bureau of Investigation can't unlock Texas shooter's phone MORE announced Monday that $98.5 million in grant funding is going to local police departments to hire additional officers.

The move marks a stark about-face from the Obama-era, when the DOJ's community policing office worked towards building trust between police departments and the communities they serve, in part by reforming police departments.